Types of Telescopes

There are many different types of telescopes. There are space telescopes, radio telescopes, and ultraviolet telescopes. The telescopes that casual stargazers use are called optical telescopes. Optical telescopes collect light from stars and planets display the universe in front of you. We talked about these telescopes in the past section. Although optical telescopes are excellent for stargazing, scientists can only get so much data from them. Instead, they use radiation-based telescopes.

Something that both optical telescopes and radiation-based telescopes have in common is that they show us the universe by collecting electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is simply radiation that interacts with electricity and magnetism(as the name suggests). Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared waves, visible light, ultraviolet waves, x-rays, and gamma rays. We identify electromagnetic waves based on their wavelength. Radio waves have the longest wavelength, while gamma radiation has the shortest wavelength. The shorter the wavelength, the more energy it has.

Different types of telescopes are used depending on the task it is supposed to fulfill. For long-distance imaging, we use radio waves, since their wavelength is the longest. The telescopes that you see above are all radio telescopes. They look similar to satellites since they are collecting the radio waves then transcribing them into an image with data processing.

But a huge limiter with radio telescopes is the Earth's atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere shields it from most radiation, which-don't get me wrong- is a good thing. But it limits the capabilities of telescopes here on Earth. To deal with this problem scientists have started to use space telescopes. The most famous and the most important space telescope is the Hubble space telescope, which we will cover in the next section. Since space telescopes don't have to deal with the lensing effect of Earth's atmosphere they get a better view of the universe. Space telescopes also get to detect electromagnetic waves that would normally be unable to get through Earth's atmosphere. Space telescopes use their position in space to their advantage, they can collect unfiltered electromagnetic waves that are not as long as radio waves, giving us insight into the universe.